I would guess students that are more interested in pure math are a minority though. I definitely don't think this group should be ignored, but perhaps the core

I would guess students that are more interested in pure math are a minority though. I definitely don't think this group should be ignored, but perhaps the core classes could be more "practical" while still offering advanced pure math electives (potentially through a magnet type school that services multiple "regular" school districts). I believe it is already pretty common for universities to have multiple offerings of the same general math subject to this end, although this might be limited to schools with larger STEM programs. IME K-12 math wasn't taught in a very engaging way regardless of whether one was interested in theory or applications. The people I knew that were into math all did after school and/or summer courses, although I don't know whether the interest came before or after their parents enrolled them in these supplements. Personally I did not think math was interesting until undergraduate, where I first gained an appreciation of the applied work and subsequently found myself interested in some pure math areas as well. I wish I had realized how cool math can be earlier on in my education- I do recall enjoying very early math, but I think by 5th grade I was unfortunately jaded. I guess I ultimately wish high schools had a bit more diversity in classes. I don't know if this is feasible, but I feel by grades 11 and 12 it would be greatly beneficial if students had more choice between a number of focused electives. Even at my high school which was generally considered high quality, the upper level courses were largely the standard AP curricula, which at least in the case of biology was still very much a survey course. I don't think this helped students decide what they wanted to pursue enough, and it seems that freshman year of college for most people was largely a repeat. Why not let students get some sense of a couple subfields before they have to actually commit to something? Online courses can maybe help but I feel they will have to be grounded somehow in the high schools to be fully effective. Anyways this got a bit off topic, but if anyone has any related information/thoughts I'd love to hear it- I am certainly interested in education but don't have much practical knowledge/experience outside of my own bubble at this time.